THREATPORT/VULNERABILITY/CVE-2023-36478
HIGH SEVERITY

CVE-2023-36478

Jetty vulnerability

CVSS
7.5
EPSS
3.8%
EPSS pct
89th
Exploited
No known
Eclipse Jetty provides a web server and servlet container. In versions 11.0.0 through 11.0.15, 10.0.0 through 10.0.15, and 9.0.0 through 9.4.52, an integer overflow in `MetaDataBuilder.checkSize` allows for HTTP/2 HPACK header values to exceed their size limit. `MetaDataBuilder.java` determines if a header name or value exceeds the size limit, and throws an exception if the limit is exceeded. However, when length is very large and huffman is true, the multiplication by 4 in line 295 will overflow, and length will become negative. `(_size+length)` will now be negative, and the check on line 296 will not be triggered. Furthermore, `MetaDataBuilder.checkSize` allows for user-entered HPACK header value sizes to be negative, potentially leading to a very large buffer allocation later on when the user-entered size is multiplied by 2. This means that if a user provides a negative length value (or, more precisely, a length value which, when multiplied by the 4/3 fudge factor, is negative), and this length value is a very large positive number when multiplied by 2, then the user can cause a very large buffer to be allocated on the server. Users of HTTP/2 can be impacted by a remote denial of service attack. The issue has been fixed in versions 11.0.16, 10.0.16, and 9.4.53. There are no known workarounds.
Affected vendor
Eclipse
Affected product
Jetty
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness type (CWE)
  • CWE-190 — Integer Overflow or Wraparound
  • CWE-400 — Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Published
2023-10-10

Risk analysis

Based on its CVSS vector, this vulnerability is exploitable over the network, low attack complexity, requiring no privileges, no user interaction. Successful exploitation leads to high impact to availability.

Its EPSS score of 3.8% reflects a lower probability of exploitation activity in the wild over the next 30 days, placing it above 89% of all scored CVEs.

Check your external exposure to CVE-2023-36478

  • Confirm whether Eclipse Jetty is running on any internet-facing host or subdomain.
  • Match discovered service fingerprints against the version affected by CVE-2023-36478.
  • Prioritise remediation if the asset is public, business-critical, or near authentication/payment flows.

How ThreatPort helps with CVE-2023-36478

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